feminists-from-england

"Hallie Eustace Miles ... The daughter of the of , Hallie Killick married the sportsman and writer in 1906. Together with her husband, she ran a vegetarian restaurant and pioneering health food centre, and counted AC Benson, among other literary luminaries, as customers and friends. As the centenary of the first world war approaches, her diary of their life during the , originally published in 1930, is definitely worth seeking out."

"Many argue that the is inhumane, that meat is expensive, that it contains uric acid, that it may be tubercular, and so on. All this is too true; but I do not think that the scientific case for meat is sufficiently explained, or given its due as a body-builder and repairer, as a stimulant and appetizer, which is why, when most people go without it, they must have a substitute."

"Besides the darkness of the night, many minor shadows cross our paths, making the hues of Life obscure. These are not always caused by sorrow. There are clouds brought by misunderstanding, sharp words and thoughtless speeches. Want of thought throws many shadows."

"It is the habit of s to pick fruit, vegetables, etc., in the morning, and to bring in the day's supply at about eleven o'clock, and on Saturday to provide sufficient for two days' consumption. Except in the case of strawberries (which should be gathered, if possible, on the day on which they are to be eaten) and asparagus (which is infinitely better when cut just before the time for cooking), there is no objection to this plan, provided the garden produce is stored in the best manner. Carrots and turnips, s and onions, should be placed in wire racks; and s should be arranged root-end downmost in a shallow pan of fresh water. s and cauliflower may be treated likewise. should be placed in water as if it were a flower—not soused head over heels in that liquid."

"Chocolate Cake ¼ lb. chocolate grated 3 oz. flour. and melted in a basin 2 eggs. in the oven. 4 drops vanilla essence. 3 oz. butter. 1 teaspoonful baking ¼ lb. castor sugar. powder. Beat the butter, chocolate and sugar to a cream, add the vanilla. Beat the eggs and add the flour and baking powder and whip well for 5 minutes. Bake in a moderate oven in a buttered tin for an hour."

"In the first thirteen years of the food was cheap and plentiful, ... and the development of and which had come about in the latter part of the nineteenth century permitted a great variety of fare. But, in spite of this plenty, inquiry showed that for the most part the lower-paid workers were then considerably under-nourished, the better-paid just sufficiently nourished and the upper classes over-nourished. Though low wages explained to a great extent the under-nourishment, lack of knowledge of what to buy and how to cook it was, as it still is, responsible for some of the malnutrition both of the rich and of the poor."

"I imagine that there are to-day no three names better known in our country than those of , , and , and this for the reason that they are connected with the intimate details of our lives! It was they who ordained we should or should not have bacon for our breakfast or for our . When husbands grumbled wives made a whipping-boy of the , and I have heard the demand of a child for jam dismissed with the words: "There ain't none, and if you're not a good boy I'll ask Lord Rhondda never to let you have no more neither.""

"First, a police force which has consistently put protecting itself above protecting people harmed by Hillsborough. Second, collusion between that force and complicit print media. Third, a flawed judicial system that gives the upper hand to those in authority over and above ordinary people. Shamefully, the cover-up continued in this Warrington courtroom. Millions of pounds of public money were spent re-telling discredited lies."

"What we've seen today is a deliberate act of levelling down. I don't believe we can proceed through this pandemic by grinding people down. We need to carry them with us, not crush their spirit."

"[on seeking permission to stand as an MP in 2026] It brings with it a poison we should not let enter our city-region. I see this by-election as the frontline of that fight for the Manchester Way and feel I owe it to a city which has given me so much to lead it from the front, despite the risks involved. With your permission to stand, I would run a hopeful and unifying campaign with broad appeal to voters, focusing on the positivity around what we have achieved, whilst at the same time being honest about the alienation people feel from politics."

"Yesterday Andy Burnham sought such permission from the NEC to stand in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election, which would have led to a mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester.The NEC has decided not to grant Andy Burnham permission to stand. The NEC believes that causing an unnecessary election for the position of Greater Manchester mayor would have a substantial and disproportionate impact on party campaign resources before the local elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd in MayAlthough the party would be confident of retaining the mayoralty, the NEC could not put Labour’s control of Greater Manchester at any riskAndy Burnham is doing a great job as mayor of Greater Manchester. We believe it is in the best interests of the party to avoid an unnecessary mayoral election."

"A committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms."

"Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive."

"Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people — the autobiographists and the biographists."

"The first stone is love, and that shall fail you. The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you. The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you. The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you. The fifth stone shall not fail you."

"The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss."

"What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? ... The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has."

"He had always been sartorially unlucky; he had always suffered ... from the devilishness of clothes. A conspiracy of tailors and outfitters, as it seemed to him, caused him always to be nipped at the armpits by waistcoats, irked across the back by coats, deserted by studs, tortured by shoes, blistered by socks, betrayed by sock-suspenders and braces."

"The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it."

"None of us wants to be average. That we are so is a melancholy fact borne in upon us in middle life, and we do not always relish it."

"Curiosity needs food as much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it."

"Islands are gregarious animals, they decorate the ocean in conveys."

"High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?"

"Call no man foe, but never love a stranger. Build up no plan, nor any star pursue. Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger. Thus nothing Fate can send, And nothing Fate can do Shall pierce your peace, my friend."

"Did Older and Wiser people ... ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"It was young David mocked the Philistine. It was young David laughed beside the river. There came his mother — his and yours and mine — With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver."

"Grief do I give you — grief and dreadful laughter. Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after. The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine."

"Oh, bless your blindness, glory in your groping! Mock at your betters with an upward chin! And, when the moment has gone by for hoping, Sling your fifth stone, O son of mine, and win."

"The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead."

"The train ran like a struggling fish on an almost taut line; it jerked helplessly yet strongly from side to side; twitching and tugging, it was drawn through the rippling land towards the ruthless mountains."

"Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing."

"She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to be a woman was in itself a good argument."

"All progress in knowledge takes place through the correction of that which has been received on authority, ... but without the huge body of traditional knowledge, accurate and inaccurate together, there would be nothing even to correct. Progress is not made in spite of authority, but by means of it."

"We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back."

""Well, Ipsie, all I can say is..." But she never said anything more, so perhaps that really was all she could say."

"Always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew."

"Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India."

"Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no eccentricities and no heart."

"Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten."

"The gardener was one of those who are never surprised without being thunderstruck."

"Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered."

"The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them."

"Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values."

"Marie Stopes, the great apostle of contraception in interwar Britain, was also—like many among the progressives of the time—a keen eugenicist. In 1935, she attended a Congress for Population Science in Nazi Berlin. In August 1939, she even sent Hitler a volume of her dreadful poems, accompanied by a treacly epistle about love. Yet all this has been forgotten amid continuing progressive admiration for Marie Stopes’s embrace of what are nowadays known as "reproductive rights.""

"In its most beautiful expression and sublimest manifestations, the celibate ideal has proclaimed a world-wide love, in place of the narrower human love of home and children. Many saints and sages, reformers, and dogmatists have modeled their lives on this ideal. But such individuals cannot be taken as the standard of the race, for they are out of its main current: they are branches which may flower, but never fruit in a bodily form."

"Each heart knows instinctively that it is only a mate who can give full comprehension of all the potential greatness in the soul, and have tender laughter for all the childlike wonder that lingers so enchantingly even in the white-haired."

"We are not much in sympathy with the typical hustling American business man, and we have often felt compunction for him, seeing him nervous and harassed, sleeplessly, anxiously hunting dollars, and all but overshadowed by his over-dressed, extravagant and idle wife, who sometimes insists that her spiritual development necessitates that she shall have no children. Such husbands and wives are also found in this country; they are a growing produce of the upper reaches of the capitalist system. Yet such wives imagine that they are upholding women’s emancipation."

"The most complete human being is he or she who consciously or unconsciously obeys the profound physical laws of our being in such a way that the spirit receives much help and as little hindrance from the body as possible."

"At sixteen I was vain because someone praised me. My father said: "You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. If you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your own soul's doing. Then you may be proud of it and be loved for it.""

"An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating."